Tadite
Registered User
Not really. Two authoritarian governments continuing policy they had already in place prior to the pandemic doesn't seem to increase whatever risk we as Americans would have within the country. The epidemic didn't launch anything China at least had all of these programs well in place before, have literally hundreds of thousands of government employees doing nothing every day but deleting message boards for censorship, and most of these programs date back to prior to the communists rising to power, even if they have expanded it over the last decade immensely.
You underestimate how hard and expensive it is to create a surveillance program. Evaluation of the post 9/11 actions by the US government, again and again, come up with the same conclusion. The feds have no idea what they know or don't know and also nearly no ability to follow single individuals or even groups without vast amounts of expenditure, and no apps/phones don't compensate for that financial issue. Hell, they had actual phone transcriptions of 9/11 suspects for years sitting around because the FBI didn't have enough people who could speak Arabic with clearance to go through all of it. Honestly, have you ever thought about how rare it would be for a criminal/terrorist/bad guy to actually talk about being one in relation to all the other reasons they use communication? You spend most of the time listening to people talk to their mother or organized a soccer game. It's not like in the movies these things aren't cheap, easy, or even wanted. The government doesn't care about you enough to want to know where you are or what you buy and it sure as heck isn't going to spend the money to find out. What would be the point?
Also no. The founding fathers did not think that being quarantined during a pandemic was undermining liberty. That would have been a common occurrence in that era and no these types of temporary issues are not some fundamental crisis of America. It isn't the first pandemic and it won't be the last.
If anything today's supreme court arguments are far more important then a few months of quarantine during a pandemic. If the administration wins then the congress losses the ability to force information from the executive branch, or at least from the treasury, which was a power they had since 1789 and in fact would allow Trump to shoot someone on 5th avenue and not only not be charged by any police force but also not even be investigated. Till he was no longer president. It's an order of magnitude more important than having to stay home so people don't die.
